Mike Sadler
Born(1920-02-22)22 February 1920
London, England
Died4 January 2024(2024-01-04) (aged 103)
Cambridge, England
Military career
RankMajor

Major Willis Michael Sadler, MC, MM (22 February 1920 – 4 January 2024) was a British Army officer. He was the last original member of the Special Air Service and the last survivor of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG).[1][2][3]

Early life

Willis Michael Sadler was born on 22 February 1920 in London, England to Adam and Wilma Sadler. When his father moved to Stroud, Gloucestershire to manage a plastics factory, the family moved to the nearby village of Sheepscombe.[4] Sadler attended the Oakley Hall School in Cirencester and the Bedales School in Hampshire, graduating in 1937.[5]

Adult life

In 1937, Sadler moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to work on a tobacco farm. When World War II began in 1939, he enlisted in a Rhodesian regiment anti-tank unit of the British Army that would fight Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps along the Egypt-Libya border.[5]

While on leave in Cairo, Egypt, Sadler convinced members of the recently assembled Long Range Desert Group that he could serve as their truck convoys' celestial navigator. In this role, he guided Special Air Service commandos across the Libyan Desert for nighttime raids on Axis airfields and bases. He utilized a theodolite to identify the group's position, even on the uneven terrain of sand dunes.[5]

During his first assignment with the LRDG, Sadler navigated the Special Air Service across more than 400mi (643.74km) of desert between the Jalo Oasis in Cyrenaica, Libya, and the Axis airfield in Tamet, Libya, allowing the British Army to destroy twenty-four aircraft and kill dozens of German and Italian pilots. Soon after, he was promoted to corporal and awarded the Military Medal.[5]

In the July 1942 raid on the Sidi Haneish Airfield in Egypt, Sadler navigated eighteen jeeps, each armed with four Vickers K machine guns, to victoriously destroy thirty-seven German aircraft. However, during an attempted raid on Benghazi as part of Operation Bigamy in September 1942, the Long Range Desert Group was unable to avoid Italian reconnaissance, resulting in the loss of seventy armed vehicles.[5]

In January 1943, SAS founder David Stirling sought to lead a small group through the Tebaga Gap and meet with the British First Army for Operations Vulcan and Strike against Axis forces in Tunis, Tunisia. While Stirling and ten of the soldiers were captured by German forces, Sadler escaped with two others, walking 110mi (177km) without food and water until they reached the French Foreign Legion and American 26th Infantry Regiment in Tozeur, Tunisia. Lieutenant Colonel John W. Bowen suspected the trio were German spies, but Sadler eventually negotiated his release to join the British Eighth Army for the remainder of the Western Desert campaign.[6]

Soon after the June 1944 Normandy landings, Sadler parachuted into France and was awarded the Military Cross for destroying two German machine gun crews using an armed jeep behind enemy lines.[4]

In 2021, Sadler's Passage in Stonington Island, Antarctica, was named after him in recognition of his work there.[7]

Sadler died on 4 January 2024 at the age of 103 in a nursing home in Cambridge, England.[5]

In 2013, Sean Rayment published "Fighting Rommel: Captain Mike Sadler" as part of his Tales from the Special Forces Club series of short stories.[5]

In 2022, Tom Shankland directed SAS: Rogue Heroes, a historical drama television series about the Special Air Service's Western Desert Campaign during World War II based on Ben Macintyre's 2016 book of the same name. In the series, Sadler was portrayed by Tom Glynn-Carney.[5]

References

  1. Murphy, Brian (January 5, 2024). "Mike Sadler, desert navigator who guided WWII commandos, dies at 103". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on January 8, 2024. Retrieved January 8, 2024.
  2. "Major Mike Sadler obituary". The Times. 4 January 2024. Retrieved 4 January 2024. (subscription required)
  3. "Mike Sadler, last of the wartime SAS 'Originals' and their principal navigator – obituary". The Daily Telegraph. 4 January 2024. Retrieved 4 January 2024. (subscription required)
  4. 1 2 Smith, Michael (2024-01-14). "Mike Sadler Obituary". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-01-15.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Mike Sadler, Intrepid Desert Navigator in World War II, Dies at 103". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 January 2024. (subscription required)
  6. Macintyre, Ben (4 October 2016). Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain's Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War. Crown Publishing Group. pp. 192–204. ISBN 978-1101904169.
  7. "Mike Sadler, Last of the Wartime SAS 'Originals' and their Principal Navigator – Obituary". The Telegraph. 2024-01-04. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2024-01-13.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.